Chapter 5 #3
We fall into a rhythm. He loosens clamps; I hold the line steady.
He says, “Again,” and our shoulders brush when we both lean in the same direction.
Once, when I have to reach across him for the spray bottle, my chest skims his back.
He goes very still, just for a breath, then keeps moving like he didn’t feel all the air leave my lungs.
“Start it again.”
The idle evens, then wobbles. He frowns, adjusts the distributor a hair.
“Better,” I say.
He nods, eyes on the belts. “We’ll get it.”
I shift to grab a screwdriver: the back of my hand grazing his forearm. I flinch and he notices.
“You sure you’re not nervous?”
I keep my focus on the screw I absolutely don’t need to tighten yet. “Why would I be nervous?”
He bends to my level, that half-smile making my lower belly drop.
“No reason.” He plucks the screwdriver from my fingers in a slow, teasing manner.
“You just dropped a tool, forgot how to breathe when I reached past you, and you’re standing a foot farther away from me than you were five minutes ago. ”
“I am not,” I say, immediately taking a big step closer out of spite.
His eyes flick down to the new distance, then up. “There she is.”
The radio hums. Outside, a truck rumbles past the garage. He sets the screwdriver down, wipes his hands on a rag, and studies me with that fucking smirk on his face. I have the urge to kiss off.
“Mixture screws next,” he says, “quarter turn out on each.”
I lean in to the carb, careful, aware of him at my shoulder, of the way his presence fills up all the space that isn’t air. We listen together as the idle deepens, one beat, two, almost right.
I glance at the tray. “We should…maybe take five? Before I drop a wrench on your toes.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Take five.”
He reaches past me one more time for the rag, palm skimming my waist like he knows I’ll feel it for the next hour. Then he nods toward the cart: the coffee, the pink box, and steps back just enough to let me breathe.
We take our break on opposite sides of the tool cart like it’s a neutral zone. The coffee and donuts are between us. The shop fan hums lazily. Outside, a church bell rings once and then quits.
I pick at the corner of a maple bar and don’t taste a thing.
“Good?” Scotty asks, nodding at the donut.
“It’s fine,” I say, then hear how fake that sounds and huff out a breath. “No. I don’t know.”
His eyes flick over me, not prying, just… present. He takes a sip of coffee and waits.
It spills out faster than I plan. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
He goes still, his coffee paused halfway to his lips.
“I always thought it was obvious,” I push on.
“The plan. Get the degree, dominate law school, crush the internships, work twice as hard as the guy who thinks it’s adorable I showed up to the meeting with better notes.
Come home, make Slade Enterprises bulletproof.
Be the triplet who keeps the wheels on while Axel plays hero and Aiden sends thumbs-up from Texas.
” I laugh, but it’s hollow. “And I did it. I’m doing it.
It’s just—” I stare at the donut like it’ll finish the sentence for me.
“Just?” he says, quietly.
“Just that lately, I sit at my desk and stare at these deals and contracts I used to love and… nothing.” The admission tastes like defeat and relief at the same time.
It’s cathartic to finally admit it all. “I keep telling myself it’s a phase, that I’m tired, that I just need another big deal like the MLB, once we pinpoint our next big acquisition…
it’ll click again. But it doesn’t. And I hate that it scares me. ”
He doesn’t rush to fix it. He doesn’t tell me I’m being dramatic. He just lets the fan and the ticking clock and my own breath fill the space.
“I keep hearing everyone’s voices,” I say, softer.
“My dad’s gruff approval when I knock something out of the park.
Mom’s quiet pride when she gushes about me to friends.
Aunt Celeste’s whole… thing.” I motion vaguely, meaning her power, her polish, her legacy that I strive to live up to.
“The cousins are teasing about me being the bossy triplet in charge. And I thought I liked being that person. Maybe I still do. But I don’t know if that’s what I want forever, or if it’s just what I’m good at. ”
He watches me for a beat more. “Who’s been putting the pressure on you?”
“Everyone,” I say immediately, then falter. “I mean… Dad has opinions. The family always has opinions. People in town do too. But—” I close my eyes, then open them, owning it. “Me. It’s me. Ninety percent of it is me.”
He nods once.“Uh-huh.”
I stare down at the maple bar, now mangled beyond recognition.
“I made a list in my head when I was sixteen,” I admit.
“School. Career. Be indispensable. Don’t need anyone.
Don’t slow down. Don’t… want things that aren’t useful.
” My throat gets tight. “I think I started confusing what I could carry with what I actually wanted to carry.”
There’s a beat where I expect him to reach out and touch me. He doesn’t. He just slides a clean shop towel across the cart toward me. I take it because my hands need something after that sugary mess.
“It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“It doesn’t,” he says.
“I built this whole machine, ya know? This version of me that runs hot twenty-four-seven and never breaks, and I’m scared if I stop to change a part, the whole thing’s going to fall apart.” I swallow. “And I don’t even know what part to change.”
“What is it that needs to change?”
“I dunno,” I shrug. “A new job? Different expectations? Maybe I don’t even want different. Maybe I just want… permission to want something at all.”
His mouth tips. “From who?”
I look at him, the question landing exactly where it should. “Me,” I say, and it feels like stepping off a ledge I was never meant to stand on in the first place.
He shifts closer, his forearm brushing the edge of the cart near my hand. “Sounds like you just gave it to yourself.”
A laugh slips out, shaky. “Maybe. God, listen to me. I’m a mess.”
“You’re honest with yourself,” he says. “That’s not a mess. Most people are too scared to be honest with themselves.”.
“I thought you’d tease me,” I admit. “Or tell me to go take a run and sweat it out. Something simple.”
He shrugs, half a smile. “I’m sorry if I’ve not been enough of a friend in the past to make you feel like you could be honest with me.”
I look at him for a minute. He holds my gaze, steady, and the safe quiet of him does more than any pep talk ever has. I can breathe. I didn’t realize how little I’d been doing that.
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it.
He nods, like that’s enough. Then he nudges the pink box with a knuckle. “Eat one, the sugar will make you feel better.”
“You’re probably right.” I trade the mangled maple for a chocolate-glazed. He watches me take the first bite, his eyes following my tongue as I swipe it across my bottom lip.
“Better?” he asks, bringing his thumb up to wipe at the corner of my lips. I’m about to respond, but I almost choke on the donut when he brings his thumb to his lips, wrapping it around the tip and sucking. “Mmmm.”
I just nod my head, swallowing the donut down. We stand there another few breaths while I finish.
He sets his cup down. “Ready to get your hands dirty again?”
We spend the next few hours mostly in silence, just the hum of the radio and his guidance or instruction every so often. I’m still coming down from our talk—er, my rant rather about pressure, family, expectations when he breaks the silence first, voice low.
“Why’d you bring up our kiss last night?”
I glance over, startled. “What?”
His eyes flick up from the workbench, steady on me. “By the fire. You asked if I remembered.”
I laugh, trying to play off my nerves. “I was just trying to get under your skin.”
He grunts, half a smile tugging his mouth. “Worked.”
I swallow. “Good.”
He’s quiet for a beat, wiping his hands on a rag. I should leave it alone, but instead, the words slip out before I can stop them. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
He glances over, brow raised. “The car?”
I shake my head, heart thudding. “Our kiss. Even before I brought it up, actually.”
That makes him pause. He tosses the rag aside, leaning one hip against the workbench. “Yeah?”
I nod, heat creeping up my neck. “You never said why you did it.”
He exhales slowly. “We were kids.”
“So? Doesn’t mean it didn’t count.”
“The bottle landed on you, remember? That’s why I did it.”
“Technically, it didn’t. Milly told you to kiss me. You could have said no.”
That grin ghosts across his face. “You really want to dig up that night, Barbie?”
“Maybe.” I step closer, pulse racing. “You lingered. Everyone else got quick pecks, but you—” I tilt my head, teasing— “you didn’t rush it with me.”
He chuckles under his breath. “You’re right. It lasted at least two seconds.”
I fold my arms, frustrated that he keeps deflecting. “I know we were kids and it was still just a peck, that isn’t my point.”
“So what is your point?”
I huff. “So why? You could’ve kissed anyone in that circle.” He shakes his head and closes his toolbox, thinking for a second.
“Because,” he says quietly, eyes darkening, “you were staring at me like you wanted me to.”
That admission steals the air from my lungs. He must see it, because his expression softens a fraction. I try to cover the flutter in my chest with a grin. “And now?”
“What about now?”
“You said you don’t repeat mistakes.” My voice dips, low and soft. “You told me that on my sixteenth birthday… just three years later when you asked what I wanted and I said a second kiss.”
His jaw flexes. “You remember that, huh?”
“Hard to forget.” My throat feels dry.
He dips his head down to look into my eyes. “Last night you said that maybe we should try it again. Just to see if we’re better at it.”
“Do you—” I swallow nervously, “think that we would be? Better at it?”
His gaze drops to my mouth, and I feel a rush from my belly, straight to my
thighs. “I think it’d ruin us.”
My heartbeat feels like it trips over itself. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
He swallows hard, like he’s fighting an internal battle, and then he moves.
It’s small at first, just a step closer, then another. The air grows thick between us. I can smell the faint hint of his sweat. His hands are still rough from work, grease smudged faintly along the backs. He reaches for me, slow, careful, like he’s giving me every chance to step back.
Instead, I stay right where I am.
“Hands,” he murmurs, nodding toward mine. “You’re a mess.”
He takes one, turns it palm up. His thumb drags across the streak of oil near my wrist, slow enough to make my breath hitch.
Then he reaches for a rag, dampens it with cleaner, and starts wiping the grease from my fingers.
It’s gentle, almost reverent, the kind of touch that makes my heart ache for intimacy and my lady bits throb like I’m in heat.
When he’s done with one hand, he moves to the other. His thumb lingers against the inside of my wrist, tracing the flutter of my pulse. I swear he can feel it hammering.
“You missed a spot,” I whisper, voice trembling.
He smirks. “Where?”
I gesture vaguely toward my cheek, and he steps in, so close the heat of him sinks straight through me.
His rough fingers brush against my skin, slow, deliberate, wiping away the faint smudge of grease.
But he doesn’t stop once it’s gone. His thumb drifts, the back of his knuckles grazing down my jaw.
I forget how to breathe.
His eyes lock on mine, and for a split second, everything else disappears… the hum of the lights, the citrus tang of the cleaner, the years of holding back. It’s just him and me. The space of a breath between us.
Then he exhales, low and rough, and I know he’s fighting it just as hard as I am.
“Scotty,” I whisper, not even sure what I’m asking for.
His mouth curves into that slow, wicked smile that’s undone me since I was thirteen. “Careful, Barbie,” he murmurs, his voice rasping like gravel. “Now I’m the one under your skin.”
He leans one impossible inch closer, enough that his breath fans across my lips, close enough that I can almost taste the lingering coffee on his breath, and then he stops. Pulls back just enough to break whatever spell we’re under.
The loss of his heat feels like a slap. I blink, dazed, while he steps away, grabbing the rag again like he needs something to do with his hands. “You should head home,” he says softly. “Long day.”
I find my voice, barely. “I fucking hate you.”
He grins, that infuriating, heart-melting grin, and throws in a wink to just make it that much sexier. “No, you don’t.”
I smack his arm, but the touch just makes it worse. His muscles tense under my palm, solid and warm. I snatch my hand back before I can do something reckless, like grab his collar and kiss him myself.
“See ya, Bescher.” He stares at me for another second before taking a few steps back.
“Bye, Barbie.”
I turn before he can see how flushed I am, how my hands are still trembling. Outside, the cool evening air hits my skin, but it doesn’t cool the ache simmering just beneath the surface.
I know one damn thing for sure, though… the next time he leans in to tease me, he better be prepared to ruin things because I won’t let him stop.